Job Qualification

If you're not too broken up at or distracted by the invisible perfidies of, ah, cancel culture, here's an interesting thread from the New Yorker's Adam Davidson on the likelihood of King Leer's Scottish golf resort (probably all of them, really) being a useful node in the global bratva money-laundering network.

Martyn McLaughlin has also been doing plenty of work for years on this story on the Scottish side. Natasha Bertrand broke a story last fall about the Air Force having to stop at the base nearby for refueling flights, and staying and playing -- on the taxpayer's dime -- at the golf club instead of at a hotel or on the base.

It's interesting to note how little mention any of this ever gets in the American corporate mediocracy. WaPo's David Fahrenthold has done excellent work for years on how Trump ran his scam charities through his rat-infested resorts, and it eventually got Trump busted and fined $2 million for charity fraud -- which again got precious little mention in the vaunted MSM.

Davidson does note this problematic pattern down in the comments section of the thread. Being the natural-born cynic that I am, I can't help but wonder if, despite the fine efforts by many fine reporters, the editors and publishers who actually own and run the media entities see these "failures" as such. Maybe it's not a bug but a feature that they're always ready, willing, and able to catch the latest volley from the press suckaterry follies, to rub our noses in the daily lies, rather than digging for the truth and pushing that for a change.

As depressing as it must be to be a scrivening journamalist in the corporate 'murkin press corpse, it must be brutal to be a good one, to always know that your heroic efforts are going to be ignored and pushed off the masthead, because Sulzberger doesn't want to anger the powers that really be, or Jeff Zucker's two-decade scam of promoting the worst humanoid in the country makes him and his fucking friends so much precious money.

I know it's not an easy button-push, like the endless stream of sinecured crybabies whining on nationally-disseminated establishment platforms that Twitter invective is squelching their First Amendment rights and repressing them -- EXACTLY LIKE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, YOU GUYS! -- but it's kinda important all the same. There's a steadily accruing amount of circumstantial evidence that the chief executive of this country has been a launderer for the Russian mob for decades, and he's openly and deliberately taken every possible step to avoid producing evidence that would clear it up instantly.

Maybe people should check into all that? I mean, I'm not a professional journamalist, in that I don't get paid lotsa money to read from a teleprompter into a camera, but it seems kinda important and useful to know. Maybe we could set up a ratio to make everyone feel better, say, one story about Dear Leader's almost-out-in-the-open money-laundering for organized crime, for every, I dunno, ten stories on today's COVID count, or today's lies from Kayleigh MagaNinny or today's yellicopter briefing, or all the other completely useless pro forma exercises the Fourth Estate indulge in every day, instead of just once informing us about shit we didn't already know.

The ability of otherwise well-meaning people to continuously deny what is right in front of them the whole time, to fritter away their opportunities with endless nonsense and fabricated claims of systematic free-speech repression -- like, uh, like when was the last time you saw Noam Chomsky on your teevee screen, or in the pages of the New York Times versus, say, Rudy Ghouliani or Newt Gingrich? -- never ceases to amaze me. Anything to avoid picking the fight that is right in front of them, that would actually affect them and their lives.

After a while, it's reasonable to assume that this ongoing lack of focus, this endless paucity of useful thought and analysis and insight, is not accidental, especially when people -- you know, readers -- keep asking them about it.

[Addendum:  Also, too. Read the whole thing. Yes, much of the info in the thread comes from Times articles, which is to their credit. But again, it's interesting how no one really bothered to pick it all back up during, say, the 2016 campaign, and just beat him over the head with it, and make it a non-stop topic of conversation. Seriously, it has everything, it's right out of a night-time soap opera:  sex, drugs, murder, money laundering, mob ties. If you accept the fact that news and entertainment have irretrievably commingled, that should have been all the more reason to investigate and push this narrative. It is reasonable to ask not only why they didn't do that at the time, but much more importantly, why they aren't doing that now?

Same with the Democrats -- if they're not going to open investigations or impeachment proceedings, the least they can do is keep it in the conversation. Bring it up every single time. If someone asks "why aren't you investigating or impeaching," you just respond with the very second the election is over, no matter what the outcome, we will.]

The Republican Party Hates America

You sell your oldest friends, you sold your countrymen
And yet we know your name....  Motörhead, Traitor

I long ago gave up on the New York Times, and I still think the daily harm they do outweighs the occasional good, but you have to hand it to them on their latest scoop (login required), which of course reveals much more than just the basic premise of the headline.

I don't know that I had "Russia offering bounties to Taliban insurgents for killing American soldiers, and Trump knew about it" on my 2020 bingo card, but I do know that I'm not surprised, not even a little. There are infinite ways for a faithless bucket of shit to prove themselves, and this is just one of the more egregious. It's appalling, but not surprising.

What is at least a little surprising is that none of the people around him who also knew simply stepped forward and took their chances, or at least leaked it to someone in Congress.

But hell, maybe they did try a congressweasel first. It's not like either party is willing to step up and confront this fucking monster.

The title of this post is a bit misleading. The thing about hate is that you actually have to give a shit about the things you take the effort to hate. And the Republicons have made it abundantly clear that they don't care enough even about their own base to expend the energy it would take to hate them.

Contempt is a more accurate word for this. It's the contempt that a successful con artist has for the saps who fall for his sorry act, the loathing a drug dealer has for his best customers, the resentment a pussy-hound has for the women he bangs in quick succession. It's the general sentiment that suckers and dupes deserve their lot, that they'll never earn a fair shake, that if you don't take advantage of their stupidity you're the real idiot in the equation.

Already that MagaNinny broad, that horrid fucking dingbat posing as a press suckaterry, has responded that Trump and Pence "were not briefed" on the bounty issue. Think about that:  the national security apparatus of the USA had identified a situation where a rival power was paying bounties on American troops in a war zone, and they chose for some reason not to brief the chief executive and his trusty li'l sidekick. It's difficult to determine whether it's worse that that's a pathetic lie, or that it might actually be true.

I have a relative who is currently finishing boot camp at Camp Pendleton. He wants to serve his country in the military. The great thing about being young is that you don't know any better yet. All politics aside, it's disturbing to think that he and the other kids he's in camp with, young men and women with their whole lives ahead of them, finding for whatever reason some value and virtue in military service for a dying empire, are being sold out by their commander-in-chief, a gutless, pathetic old man who has never sacrificed anything for anyone, who has always prided himself on getting the upper hand over the contemptible dupes who bought his nonsense.

I don't want to ever again hear about "supporting our troops" from these worthless cocksuckers, these scumbags who sold the troops out long ago, and would in fact push their own grandmothers into a wood chipper if it would get them re-elected to whatever gubmint sinecure they're currently milking.

One rhetorical question that gets asked with some regularity is what will it take for Republicons to stand up to Trump's corruption and malfeasance? What line would he have to cross in order to necessitate action on their part? A perfectly valid question that becomes more imperative with each passing offense.

But you might also ask that question of the supposed opposition party. How bad does it get before they decide that the situation is urgent enough to act with a  genuine sense of urgency? Political prognostications about the "failure" of an impeachment effort ignore the moral and practical necessity of investigating criminal activity, which now literally encompasses what was previously unthinkable -- an American president selling out the lives of American soldiers.

It's not enough to point out the sad, obvious fact that there is no bottom to the degeneracy of this human centipede of an administration. We may not have known the ultimate depth -- and they probably will sink even lower -- but we all understood the principle long ago. This is a situation that draws stark lines, and the political futures of all participating parties should be determined by where they find themselves in relation to those lines.

If the Democrats aren't calling for hearings and flooding the zone within the next couple of days, plague or no plague, we'll know where they stand as well. I have zero interest in perpetuating gutless incrementalism. They can take their "wait for November" bullshit and stick it up their asses. Either you use all the powers you have now, or you don't.

Warren Piece

As much of a clown car as the Democratic primary season began as, the real absurdities piled up as the field winnowed. And now, thanks to a lazy, sexist media nudging a lazy, sexist voter base, the (by far) most qualified candidate has bowed out, in order that we might be afforded the privilege once again of "selecting" among a handful of elderly, cantankerous white men, some of whom may or may not be losing their faculties.

One valuable anecdotal insight the corporate media did bestow upon us leading up to Super Tuesday was the repeated observations that voters preferred Warren, but were going to vote for Biden or Sanders because of the "electability" factor. This dumb, self-reinforcing circular logic undermines the whole point of a primary, and cements the hold that the party establishment and its corporate owners hold on the public's well-being.

It is not a coincidence that all the major pharma stocks experienced a generous bump yesterday morning, or that Jim Clyburn has benefited from the largesse of that particular industry during his political career. Make of that what you will.

"Electability" is a lie. You know who was considered unelectable? Barack Obama, a black guy with a thin political résumé and a Moooslim sounding name. You know who else was considered really unelectable? Donald Fucking Trump, a ridiculous asshole and multiply-failed "businessman" who'd been making a fool out of himself for decades. All the professional pundits and common-taters said so. No one in their right mind would vote for those guys. They were gonna get their asses kicked.

So when those same brain surgeons all preach from the same "a progressive will end up like McGovern against Nixon" hymnal, I check my bullshit detector. They're constantly wrong, and still somehow employed. These are the same people that always insist that Democrats and liberals must find common ground with their opponents, but never seem to get around to even suggesting such a thing for Republicans and conservatives.

Why do you think that might be? Hmmm.... [scratches chin thoughtfully]

I wonder if -- and just hear me out here -- if we think about our perpetual electoral-entertainment-industrial complex, about who buys the ad time, who owns the broadcast entities that rent out the ad time and run the ads, what other vested interests all those entities might have, and how that impacts which politicians they might decide to support, if all those factors have anything at all to do with one another, or with why Elizabeth Warren was essentially ignored, except to occasionally hint that she might be a hectoring schoolmarm who concocted a weird lie about getting fired for getting pregnant.

I wonder.... [scratches balls thoughtfully]

The fact is that of the main candidates, only Warren and Sanders would actually do something. So Bernie becomes this insurgent commie who wrote some weird slash-fic fifty years ago, and might shoot Chris Matthews in Central Park to celebrate Che Guevara's birthday or some shit. And Warren, again, is a shrill know-it-all bitch who just reminds all the he-men out there of their first wife -- or worse yet, of her divorce lawyer.

It's tempting to blame that insane dynamic on all the media or on Trump or whatever. But the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the Democratic voting base, who collectively decided to outsmart themselves by trying to game who they thought everyone else would vote for, rather than who they actually thought would do the job best.

And so now you're gonna get Joe Biden, who has spent his entire career supporting the rackets that run the country and make American life so financially ruinous and spiritually deadening -- health care, student-loan usurers, Wall Street thieves. Hell, even Clarence Thomas.

The narrative for now is how Biden is so "smart" and "decent", and that's true enough, as far as it goes. You know who else is smart and decent? Elizabeth Warren. Even Bernie, as loud and angry and off-putting as his energy tends to be, does seem to actually give a shit about something besides himself. Joe Biden does not have the market cornered on knowing how things work, or on being a decent human being.

I understand that in a country that has desensitized itself to the daily depredations of a scummy grifter and his vile family, that qualifies as a shocker. But we got stuck with Trump for largely the same reasons -- smug complacency from the Democratic party leadership, and an inability to understand the seething anger coming up from the increasing pool of downtrodden in the glorious gig economy.

I don't know who wants to break it to Nancy Pelosi, but uh, turns out end-stage predatory capitalism isn't much fun for most people. And where Trump sussed out that anger in 2016, and got just enough people who weren't regular voters to push him across the goal line, Sanders has captured that crowd on the other side of the aisle.

Many of the Berners will indeed come over for Good Ol' Joe when the time comes, because they rightly despise Trump and the dirtbags around him. But an indeterminate -- but possibly significant -- portion of them will just stay home, because they didn't plan to vote -- they planned to vote for Bernie. Failure to recognize that and give something to them to keep them motivated is every bit as bad as their stubbornness and apparent apathy.

A.R. Moxon had a fantastic thread this morning on the illusion of "compromise" as a governmental principle. Compromise is upheld as this ideal of opposing sides coming together to find common ground and work together for the good of the country. But that stopped happening a very long time ago, and only one party seems to recognize the situation for what it is.

Republican politicians don't even pretend to reach out to Democratic voters, or even moderate Republicans, so we don't even need to bother with that notion. Democratic politicians strive for this illusory ideal of placating the elusive "swing voter" -- as if someone who is still on the fence at this late date can possibly be considered a rational actor or an honest broker -- while "shoring up" their own base. In other words, their preference is to compromise with people who will probably vote, but may or may not vote for them. But they flat-out refuse to compromise with the people who will definitely vote for them, if only you give them something to vote for, besides more of the same.

Here's a pro marketing tip for all you would-be politicians and influencers out there -- it is very difficult to generate enthusiastic support from people if your only sales pitch is to threaten them if they don't buy your product.

Best case scenario is they buy your product -- which again, offers them nothing except the dwindling possibility of preventing things from getting even worse -- and loathe you and themselves afterward. More likely is they just make a poker face, nod in mock assent until you fuck right off already, and then stay home.

Please note:  this is not at all to say that you shouldn't vote. No matter who the nominee is, no matter how much they suck, you should vote for them, and vote in all the down-ticket races as well. Biden is at least lucid enough to know what he doesn't know, and to fill those gaps with smart people, rather than dumb, greedy bootlickers. A second Trump term will be catastrophic for this country and the world, period. Both Biden and Sanders have profound flaws, and I have deep reservations about each of them. But either of them is infinitely superior to the alternative, just for the Supreme Court alone, but for so many other reasons.

That said, I also think that the Democratic Party and its principals are at best engaging in an ongoing pattern of dereliction of duty, one that can only be rectified by giving it a complete overhaul, the very second after the Republican Party is eradicated completely from the American political system.

Consider the vaunted "blue wave", and how and why they were voted in for the midterms. People wanted shit to get done. They wanted Trump's corruption and criminality investigated and prosecuted. A majority of Americans polled indicated that they wanted Trump impeached and removed.

What did the House leadership do? They balked and slow-walked it the entire way, only finally investigating and impeaching when the crimes became impossible to ignore. They cherry-picked two narrowly-drawn articles of impeachment, though there were certainly more to choose from, to keep in the chamber for backup.

And when McConnell did exactly as predicted, and moved through a sham trial, the House Dems folded and gave up. No contingency plan, no further pursuit of criminality, no impeachment of Bill Barr, even though Barr lied in his confirmation interview and has operated quite openly as Trump's lawyer, instead of the country's lawyer. Again, either the law means something or it doesn't, and inaction speaks as loudly as action.

They claimed they wanted to focus on health care instead. Okay then. So now we have a global pandemic brewing, the administration lying and covering things up, as they do. People are dying and getting sick. The labor situation is such that poor people cannot afford to take time off to go see a doctor, much less pay for treatment, which will only exacerbate the situation. We will be very lucky if this doesn't cost a large number of lives in this country; it's already claimed some.

So. What is the opposition party doing to oppose this murderous negligence? What are they doing to shine a spotlight on the open malfeasance? Say the corona virus peters out tomorrow and there are no more casualties -- the administration's handling of it has made it clear that when the "real" zombie-apocalypse death-virus does come down, the country and the world are royally screwed. They'll just ignore it until enough people have died and the economy has stopped, and then toss people into camps in a half-assed attempt to quarantine them. They are unprepared because they clearly just don't give a shit.

Where is the Democratic leadership on all that, or are they still crowing about all the bills they passed that just die on the Senate floor, thanks to Traitor McConnell's hate for this country? It really doesn't matter if you pass four hundred or four million bills, if everyone knows they're just going to sit there in a stack, while you bleat about how that sucks. Yes, it sucks. Are you going to figure out what to do about it, or are you just going to shake working people down for more money and canvassing time, so you can keep your job and continue not to fix the problem?

It says a lot about the current state of the Democratic Party that, up until a few days ago, their candidacy for the presidency had essentially been hijacked to the point that two of the top three contenders, Bernie and Bloomberg, were not even Democrats. That's a sign of a party that has lost its moorings, and is not convincing its base anymore, because it doesn't stand for anything effectively and forcefully. It makes all the expected noises, but doesn't actually accomplish anything to move the proverbial ball forward. They've always got a shitload of excuses ready, though.

These are just some of the things that Liz Warren would have actually improved and changed, without meaningless bleats about "reaching across the aisle" to open traitors, hoping to appeal to the better nature of thieves and scumbags. Maybe Biden comes around on this. I hope so. Honestly, I'm long past tired of being right about all these people. Every goddamned time.

I'll tell you something that you will rarely see any Extremely Online Person ever ever write:  I would very much like, just once, to be wrong about all of this. And I don't just defy the people that I write about to prove me wrong, I would gladly thank them for doing so.

But it starts with us, in the collective sense, to stop falling for these ludicrous people and their transparent lies and bullshit narratives, to grow the fuck up and start voting with our brains and our wallets, instead of our feelings and our fever dreams. More than anything else, that was the promise that Liz Warren brought to the table, along with the willingness to actually stand up and fucking fight for something valuable.

Groundhog Day

Ho-hum, just every single day now, where you have a trial, and not only does the jury foreman openly collude with the defendant on the outcome ahead of time, but the defendant's lawyers openly bribe the jury foreman and key members of the jury.

This is your country now, America. How do you like it?

Learn to Swim, See You Down in Arizona Bay

Character is fate. -- Heraclitus

Some say a comet will fall from the sky, followed by meteor showers and tidal waves.
Followed by fault lines that cannot sit still.
Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits.
And some say the end is near, some say we'll see Armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I could use a vacation from this stupid shit. -- Tool, Ænema

Here we go. After a brief feint at pretending to dither over their foregone conclusion, the cowardly scum that comprise the Senate Republicons did their sworn duty to their orange overlord and wrapped this farce up tighter than Yertle McConnell's favorite leather gimp.

No one is shocked or even surprised. We knew they would do this, because this is what they are. They hate this country, they hate most of its citizens, and they fully intend to cling to power by any means necessary. Now that they have openly authorized the chief executive -- as long as he's from their party, of course -- to do as he pleases, up to and including offering monetary inducements to foreign leaders to influence US elections, expect the phone calls and thick envelopes to fly fast and hard.

Like I keep saying:  Don't despair, prepare. Of course people feel like crying or throwing their hands up and saying fuck it, and checking out from all of it. What good does any of it do, if they're just gonna cheat to win?

Well, again, if they weren't worried about the outcome, they wouldn't need to cheat at every turn, now would they? Just a little over a year ago, people showed up for the midterms, and it paid off. Democrats retook the House. All the hearings and witnesses and evidence that came out during this process, the very fact that you were allowed to know about any of it is entirely due to the fact that people showed up in November of 2018. It's the difference between Adam Schiff running things, and a corrupt shit like Devin Nunes brushing it under the rug and running to lick his master's boots.

You don't have to wait until November to start voting either. Vote with your wallet, every day. Make your choices count. You know how much money things like the Kentucky Derby and NCAA basketball and Jim Beam bourbon dump into Kentucky's economy? Sit 'em out this year, until that festering turd McConnell finally gets flushed. Tons of teevee shows and movies are made in Georgia. What companies are still buying commercial time on Fox News?

You want things to change and improve, it's going to take a little work. Those things are bare minimum, but I guarantee you if enough people do them, it will make a difference. If you have more money, donate to some of the opposition candidates; if you have more time and the inclination to act like a Jehovah's Witness, I guess you could go door-to-door or hit the supermarkets, and get people to register to vote. If you have free time and some speaking skills and the patience to deal with idiots in the audience, maybe you run for your local planning commission or school board or city council.

(I've actually been asked by quite a few people in my area over the years, liberal and conservative, to run for some sort of local government seat. I'd be fucking terrible at it. I have the knowledge and passion, but not the patience. I've sat in on a few city council and county board meetings over the years. I know some of the members of these groups. It is nothing more than assembly-line tedium. Everything starts with pro-forma nuisances like reciting the pledge of allegiance, then before actually getting to business you have to give the audience a chance to speak. The only people who have time to attend these things are either elderly folks with nothing else to do, or idiots who are riled up over some $2.00/year mosquito abatement assessment being voted on. (That one is real, I can still recall it quite clearly.) Look at every time a new Krispy Kreme shop opens, or a new $1,000 phone is released with a slightly improved bezel. There is simply a certain percentage of people whose time is worth literally nothing to them. And they all show up at local gov't meetings. The first few episodes of the sitcom Parks & Recreation were pretty much a documentary of that phenomenon. So, thanks but no thanks.)

It's going to be difficult to keep the faith between now and then. The corporate media are engineered and incentivized to demoralize you, the better to keep you in your place. That's why they beat on Sanders and Warren, because either one of those two will actually do something. The media will go after Biden and Buttigieg and Klobuchar as well. It's always someone's turn in the barrel. They want to stir up infighting between the candidates' supporters, to depress turnout in the general election.

This is not incidental, this is the goal. An actual liberal media would not keep doing these tired-ass Cletus safari pieces, venturing out to talk to these spiteful hicks who won't fucking die already, who hate their grandkids and whine about communism but hey, where's my entitlements?

So boycott them too. Seriously, when was the last time CNN gave you anything of value? Why on earth would you read most of the Times columnists, or their lap-dog "reporting" and "anonymous" sourcing?

Of the five remaining "main" Dem candidates, I would honestly say each of them has some chance to win. There are people who have a vested interest in maintaining that Bernie or Warren are "too left" and therefore susceptible to a McGovern-type landslide. You may want to check if any of those folks offered predictions about 2016, and how that turned out.

Everyone got 2016 wrong. I got it way wrong (though, oddly enough, I do think that some of the breakdown and analysis in the linked post might still hold at least some water). Nobody, not even Trump himself, thought he would or even could win. A fake businessman with multiple bankruptcies, ridiculous appearance, a long track record of failure and incompetence, no experience in public office, had no chance against probably the most over-qualified person ever to apply for the job.

But he won because there really is a deep current of frustration and anger in this country, and he understood it well enough to monetize and weaponize it. Sanders clearly taps that discontent with just as much efficiency. Warren is getting better at it too. The panel monkeys and smart-set slop-ed columnists all beat the how're we gonna pay for it? drum like it's the only song they know.

It doesn't occur to them that some under-employed single mom with a sick kid or two and no insurance -- or hell, even with insurance, it's not like it's a vast improvement -- hears that argument and reflexively thinks about all the bullshit that gets paid for without so much as a blink. And now we're three years into paying that fat fuck to play golf on his own courses every goddamned weekend, so he can force the Secret Service to rent golf carts and jet skis and hotel rooms directly from him. Tell us again how we just can't find any money to cut working families some slack on the decades of interest payments they're forced to make to student-loan corporations.

That's the real reason the Cletus safari doofuses need to get their heads out of their asses and talk to some Democratic voters once in a while -- because we're fucking pissed too. There is a misconception that Trump's cult of cousin-fucking yahoos have some kind of monopoly on righteous anger, and that's entirely because they're the only ones the corporate media will talk to. They don't realize that Sanders and Warren have just as much of a shot as Biden -- maybe more -- because those two have learned very well how to empathize with the anger, and give it voice.

The bottom line on all this is to keep in mind one definite inevitability -- none of the remaining candidates will be ideal for everyone. Someone will have to compromise, someone will have to hold their nose for someone they really don't care for. To which I would respond, Are you sure you dislike Candidate X more than the doddering asshole that's been in there? Because that's the choice right now. It's a process -- you remove the person you're tired of, replace them with someone you can live with for the time-being, and then start looking for someone better for the next go-round.

Think of it as a slump-buster, if that helps. Sometimes you just need a warm body for a short period of time to get you out of a rut, until you find your rhythm again. I am fine with having Amy Klobuchar as a slump-buster, if it gets that clog out of the White House toilet. Hell, I'll vote for Mike Bloomberg or Tom Steyer if that's what it takes. We all need to focus on getting that fucker out, period. Worry about policy specs later.

Take a good, long look at the last two weeks, that despicable sham in the Senate. Get pissed. Make them pay, with your votes and your wallets. Be creative, be consistent. Make it hurt and don't stop the pain. Most of all, show up every time. Never forget that that's exactly what they don't want you to do.

Every election is always the most important one ever, which is another way to desensitize people over time to how things really are. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that this year really is that important, and in fact may actually be a make-or-break scenario for the continuation of what we might still recognize and hope to be a relatively free country. The upcoming sham "verdict" will legitimize what these fuckers have already done, as well as what they are going to do, and they've probably already started doing it.

It's not an exaggeration that a we saw this week a major step toward formalizing the turn into a "soft authoritarian" state, a shell of a representative democracy but really just an open rubber stamp parliament at the behest of the despot and his cronies. This country has always been run by the wealthy and conniving, and we've been heading down this road even before Trump got into politics. But it was done with a wink and a nod and at least a sop to the proles here and there.

It's all wide out in the open now. It's Lamar Alexander -- who turns eighty in July, is independently wealthy, and is retiring later this year -- casting the die for this treachery, as one final favor. Not to Trump, but to Bill Barr, who now heads an organization that has been more or less explicitly empowered to engage in whatever tactics domestically that Barr sees fit.

Bearing in mind, of course, that Barr is an Opus Dei fanatic who is on record as another one of those "moral decay" assholes that really wants to force everyone to go to the same church. Notwithstanding the inconvenient fact that Barr's own father was a pervert who wrote sex-slave pulp sci-fi books and gave Jeffrey Epstein his first real job, a job that Epstein was literally unqualified for.

Remember when the Feds raided Epstein's Manhattan sex castle last summer and confiscated truckloads of evidence? Yeah, good times. Wonder how that all turned out. I don't mean Uncle Jeff's "suicide," I mean what happened to all the fucking evidence? Maybe someone could get a House subcommittee going to investigate that.

I get why people might get confused or frustrated with this endless barrage of connections and people and timelines and dirty deeds done for fun. They can only get so far in before they throw up their hands and decide that they all do it. Everyone is corrupt, doing the same awful things to the same lurid degree. I might as well just either check out, or at least cast my lot with the guy that pushes my buttons.

That's how you end up with a mendacious pro-wrestling clown. That how you end up with fifty-one grown-ass adults who are perfectly willing to sell their country all the way down the road to despotism, under an erratic, impulsive, vindictive, blindingly stupid criminal -- someone they all know full well is guilty and incompetent and corrupt to his bones, someone they all deeply detest on a personal basis, because he is weird and pathetic and needy and completely unlikable in the way a whiny, self-absorbed brat is unlikable. They sold their souls and their country for nothing, for a brief extension to their tenuous grasp on power, and the money they can't take with them when they die.

That's how you end up with such despicable, miserable people -- by abdicating your responsibilities, by not showing up, by hoping someone else will come along and do it, because someone always does. Welp, Superman's not comin' to save the day this time, podna, so you best take stock of the situation, figure out what you can and what you can't control, and prepare accordingly.

There are many ideas and emotions that compel me to persist in pissing my thoughts into the electronic void ad nauseam, but if there is a single key defining characteristic, it's this:  a sense of justice. I hate seeing scumbags go unpunished or rewarded, while decent people who work hard and play by the rules get trampled. It drives me nuts when people just accept it as "the way things are." No, the reason things get that way is because enough people are willing to accept it. As long as it's not them or theirs, it doesn't matter. It's someone else's problem, even if it's preventable.

All that we need to do is to look at these people and the things they do, assess them accurately and objectively, and act accordingly. Liars, hypocrites, thieves, killers, the people who enable them and do their dirty work for them -- bring them to account in all the possible ways. Maybe that means bringing them to account in a court of law if they've committed a crime, maybe it means heckling them out of restaurants if they're just really awful excuses for humanity.

The reason you hear the phrase "cancel culture" so much these days is because there is a subsection of wealthy or powerful or influential people who, thanks to the wondrous technology of social media, are being held publicly to account by people from "lower" classes, who in the past had no way to effect any sort of recourse at all for the Important Person's misdeeds. The Important People can't stand it that the great unwashed can now tell them to go fuck themselves, either in Twitter or Instagram, or in public if there's a sighting.

Sometimes this gets out of hand and hits people who just made a slightly off-color comment that they later wish they hadn't. Sometimes people over-react. Who knew? But the good outweighs the bad, and the proof of that was last summer, when within the space of a few weeks, you had Maureen Dowd and Bret Stephens, two wealthy and influential people who are rewarded handsomely even though they are terrible at their job, both whining (again, in their well-paid sinecures at the nation's (erp!) flagship newspaper) about how all the nasty emails and tweets they got presaged guillotines and Kristallnacht.

I mean, when you can get that level of high-pitched whining and pearl-clutching, you know you've hit the mark. But it's also a sad reminder that, since Dowd and Stephens still have their jobs, someone still enjoys reading them. People out there still plan to vote for Trump enthusiastically, no matter how much of a thin-skinned, incompetent criminal he is, no matter how many farmers hang themselves because his genius trade war bankrupted them.

Having a sense of justice is also the inevitable, hard understanding that it is truly rare. Plenty of horrible shit never gets resolved; countless horrible people throughout history were never held accountable. They slept fine right up until the end and died comfortably. No one did jack shit about them.

That's what you really have to prepare for -- more and worse things could and probably will come out as this year progresses, and there's still a good chance that he wins. The Democrats are already showing their talent for fucking things up in the nomination process, and their fallback position is to complain that the media tools are never fair to them. Obviously the reality goes further than that. There are a lot of people in this country whose actions are incoherent and spiteful, and there are plenty who are so untroubled by all of it, they can't even be bothered to show up. If he wins, it means they win; it means once again that maybe this country isn't what you thought it was.

I don't know much, but I know at least two things:  one, that my dad didn't fight the fucking nazis and imperial Japanese in WW2 for this bullshit, any of it; two, I'm getting old and really don't feel like spending the rest of my years concerning myself with an idea that doesn't exist anymore. In other words, if the majority wants to make Idiocracy a documentary, then maybe it's time to seek greener pastures. I can't imagine doing that to my daughter and eventually grandchildren, sentencing them to some pinched, cruel, oligarchic fascist state that thinks The Handmaid's Tale is an instructional text.

We've got about 277 days or so to figure this out, folks; there really may not be a next one at this rate. We might not even get this one. It only works if enough people have enough spine and sense to stand up for themselves.

And if they can't be bothered or roused or convinced -- well, that too is an answer.

Fighting Back

Big props to Congressman Ted Lieu for literally telling Devin "Traitor" Nunes' lawyer to shove his letter up his own ass. This is the only proper and reasonable way to respond to these scumbags, period. You cannot "work with" them (sorry, Joe Biden), you cannot "compromise" or "reconcile" with them. They have made themselves abundantly clear, multiple times. They are not your colleagues, they are your enemies, by their own actions and words. They can only be opposed, the more forcefully the better. Lieu has the right idea. His next letter should end with "and the horse you rode in on."

Bear in mind that Nunes, who is invested in a winery that does business with Russian distributors, is the ranking Republican (and was the chair until the midterms flipped the House) of the House committee that gathered and investigated evidence in the impeachment charges, as well as the Mueller investigation. As has long been suspected, but now confirmed by Lev Parnas, Nunes is balls-deep in this thing. Of course he was trying to brush it under when he ran the committee, he was "investigating" himself. Seriously, do the Russians get a bulk rate for investing in this party of shameless treason-weasels?

These people are impossible to parody. I look forward to Nunes being forced to resign, investigated, tried, convicted, being bankrupted in the process, and doing a few years in Club Fed.

***Kick a sawbuck or three to Phil Arballo, who is running to unseat this worthless punk.***

Prison pro-tip for Sweet Cheeks there:  if you leave it out in the sun for a few minutes while you're on the yard, a Jolly Rancher candy can be rolled into an elongated tapered point, and used as an untraceable break-off stiletto. Aim for the neck veins, cowboy!

Newt Gingrich Is Right

But not for the reasons he thinks he is.

I mean, come on. This is almost too easy. The very first point of response from anyone -- corporate mediots, Democratic politicians, panel-show assholes -- should be to point out that the last "client" Starr and Doucheowitz teamed up to defend was a dirtbag who pimped underage girls to "elite" predators (one of which was Doucheowitz himself), and ended up suicided on the floor of a jail cell, the case swept under the rug by the son of the man who originally hired said sex predator as a teacher at a private high school.

We really need some new writers. This script is making daytime soap operas look like Errol Morris documentaries. At this rate, it's going to turn out that one of these animals has a long-lost twin.

It's impossible to keep all your energies focused all the time on keeping all the fuckery straight with these turds. There's too much of it going, constantly and everywhere.

So, for example, while one might rail against whatever jabbering bluster Dear Leader is up to any given day, one might also contain the awareness that enablers such as McConnell and Graham are actually worse on a practical level, as they have completely sold out their country in service to a madman. They are in a governmental body that was literally written into the Constitution, which they pretend to revere, as a balancing entity against an executive branch run amok.

And we've had scumbags and hypocrites oozing through the hallowed halls of gubmint forever, even before Preston Brooks nearly beat Charles Sumner to death on the Senate floor for daring to suggest that the continuation of slavery was a moral crime that a free country could no longer abide. (I love the fact that despite resigning and immediately being re-elected, Brooks died less than a year after attacking Sumner, at the ripe old age of 37. Fuck that piece of shit.) There have always been worthless people -- and by that I literally mean people who are completely worthless just as human beings -- in positions of power. Obviously.

But you would hard-pressed to find any politician in the modern era as ethically bereft and morally corrupt as Newt Gingrich. The man is fucking scum to the very bone, and he systematically laid the path for his party to mutate and pervert language and talking points in order to undermine competent governance and hand it all over to equally corrupt oligarchs.

He's made the world an objectively worse place by actions over the years, and has no remorse at all -- indeed, he's enjoying himself way more than anyone with his track record should. And that doesn't even touch on his grotesque personal life. One can only hope that his quiet moments are anything but, when the lights are low and the rest of the world is asleep, and Newt has time to reflect on who and what he really is.

That is all he is, all he's ever been, and it will be his legacy when he finally boards his trolley to hell. Keep it in mind the next time some simpering corporate media hack has that bastard on to peddle more of his evil tripe. Might as well dig up Dahmer and Gacy for their side of things, for what it's worth.

Read the Transcript

It wasn't a transcript, it was a "memorandum of conversation" (aka MEMCON), as we all know, but Dear Leader has refused to admit, thanks to plenty of water-carrying from the complaisant corporate media.

(It seems like a small point, but it's not a small point at all -- in a responsible media ecosystem, every single time an article quoted him saying the word transcript, it should have been pointed out that that word means something, and that the document in question literally had a stamp on it saying NOT A VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT. Okay? For the millionth time, shit like that illustrates how we got here.)

But one of the key bits from the MEMCON was when Trump said to Ukrainian President Zelenskiy, in reference to US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, "She's going to go through some things." Now, thanks to the cooperation of one of Giuliani's -- and by extension, Trump's; don't think for a second that he wasn't greenlighting this thing -- goons, we know that all options were on the table, that Yovanovitch got the hell out of Kyiv just in time.

At minimum, they were plotting to rough her up physically; i.e., assault and battery. But they were clearly prepared to go to the wall on her. This is a goddamned United States Ambassador we're talking about here. No wonder the FSO corps cleared out so quickly. They knew best case scenario, they'd just be undermined in their stations, or rerouted to some shithole until they were too demoralized to continue.

And if they got too inconvenient, it turns out, these demented old boozehounds were ready to go full John Le Carré on them. All of it points to a scheme to influence or even take over the Ukraine energy sector, which serves as an intermediary for Russia supplying the rest of Europe, as well as a lucrative producer in its own right.

If the Democrats aren't already working on the next set of articles of impeachment, between this, the emoluments, and plenty of other things, they deserve to lose. This is a war, very much in the Clausewitzian "politics by other means" sense, and they need to be prepared to see it through, full measures.

At least now you have an idea of exactly why none of these treasonous scumbags wants to testify. Imagine what the rest of the iceberg looks like.

The Pope of Staten Island

You want to take down a cult leader, make him (and all churches) pay taxes. You want to take down Cult 45, it's even simpler -- point and laugh at him. Every time.

This is not complicated. It's as plain as the as the tang-coated, adderall-stuffed nose on his fat fucking face. You don't need another interminable psych composite to recognize a narcissistic sociopath when you hear and see one, especially when you can scarcely avoid them for years on end.

The defining characteristic of this honking, soulless turd is his vainglory, and its complete lack of being tethered to reality. It would be one thing if he had some or any skill or core competence. It should be clear to all but the cult that he does not, unless you count incessant lying and losing other people's money.

Where he gets traction is that he recognizes that we are in a time and a society that has little use for facts or empirical data. This allows people with no conscience or character to simply manufacture self-serving lies, or repeat a familiar litany of them that the fan club can sing along to. The sociopath also knows that his honorable opponent will waste time and energy trying to refute the lies, while the sociopath just shrugs and moves on to the next one.

What do I keep saying about knowing your audience? A corollary to that would be if you want to poach market share from a competitor, you should not only know your audience, but your competitor's audience as well.

Shame Spiral

The collapse of empire continues unabated:  Li'l Nero's six-page manifesto, apparently copy-pasted directly from his Twitter feed. Hilarious. Exactly what this country deserves, a place where (among countless other daily signs of sheer wretchedness) kindergartners hold bake sales so their classmates can eat lunch. But hey, at least we can say Merry Christmas again, amirite? We all recall the dark years when people were dragged by the hair into the middle of the street and beaten severely for such things. It was on the internets, so it must be true.

Wait until the actual impeachment vote comes down tomorrow, or someone explains to him that during the impeachment process, the pardon power is suspended. Buckle in for the Christmas rage-tweet-palooza. A bottle of Jameson's would be good to have on hand.

Never let them forget, the politicians and the voters who continue to give their support to this thing:  this is what you support, this doddering, raving, preposterous old man who never earned an honest dollar nor gave a straight answer. Hang it around their necks for all time.

The Show Must Go On

Maybe Bill Taylor should have used jazz hands as he described in detail his utter dismay at the clear pattern of corruption around him. Maybe George Kent should have cried like a punk and screamed about how much he liked beer, made a scene like a day-drunk housewife.

What can our elected officials do to bring more "pizzazz" to these solemn proceedings, so that the horserace media dipshits who get paid way too much to cover these things, and the addled geriatrics that believe them, can walk away entertained by the fact that the executive branch is clearly engaged in an ongoing conspiracy of bribery and extortion?

I mean, it's certainly a service to the nation that Reuters was available to faithfully transcribe the deep musings of Fredo Number Two. The NBC guy, Jonathan Allen, is just as bad, with his avatar of two baseball players. Talk about a meaningless event that is painfully boring to sit through. I double-dog dare anyone out there to watch an entire baseball game, commercial breaks and all, without changing the channel once.

These people are disgusting, sure, but the fact that they remain gainfully employed means that there must be some role in a putatively free market for their trenchant theater critiques. So rather than be repulsed as usual with these sorts of individuals, and wondering aloud why they don't just go find a more exciting line of work if trying to save the goddamned country just isn't interesting enough, let's stipulate that there are two possibilities with these "people think these hearings are boring" analyses:

1. They're wrong.
2. They're right.

Obviously to a certain extent, both possibilities have at least some truth to them. There are 325 million or so people in this country, and some of them are assholes or morons or simply too caught up in whatever distraction-of-the-day has captured their attention, to pay heed to what's going on.

So what I really mean here is that if a sufficient number of people out there are actually interested in the proceedings, and what these witnesses -- serious career people who have decades of civil service and (in many cases) military experience, who have served under chief executives of both parties with the same degree of dedication -- have revealed so far, and will continue to do so.

The public hearings just started a day ago; the meter takes time to move. And a responsible media, focused on reporting the facts and providing a narrative context, instead of lamely trying to guess the engagement of people they don't know and haven't talked to directly, can affect that meter.

And it already has moved since the initial inquiry began, which would tend to lean more in the favor of Possibility #1. That means that the theater critics, instead of trying to provide reality-teevee snark and pigskin-prognosticator bullshit, need to either report the facts or just go find another job better suited to their skill set, bearing in mind that Eric Trump appears to have hands, so he probably doesn't need these fools to jerk him off.

Possibility #2 is much scarier, because if there really is a critical mass of people who just don't give a shit about the open malfeasance of these fuckers, then it's only going to get worse, the country really is done for, and we'll deserve it.

But we're not there yet, so it's good to see people telling the theater critics to fuck off and find honest work.

Mister Popularity

Last night, Andy Beshear proved it could be done, and defeated Kentucky's second-most despised politician home. (Well, Matt Bevin is going to kick and scream and contest the results, but he's going to lose, and he knows it.) And Beshear accomplished this just a day after cult leader and tonsorial adventurer Genius Q. Dealmaker wheedled a spare gathering of toothless diaper-fillers about his need for Bevin to remain in office.

You can't let that happen to me!

Obviously, it's way too early for Democrats, liberals, and people who are just sick of Fuckface Von Clownstick and everything he represents, to pitch a huge tent just yet. Bevin lost by about five thousand votes, and every other state race there went to the Republicon candidate by a wide margin. So this had as much to do with Bevin's existing unpopularity as it has to do with Clownstick's steadily increasing unpopularity, which by definition is creeping in his own backyard. Still, a win is a win, and there were plenty of other nice wins in tough states last night.

So here's the real point here -- Kentucky's most-despised politician, one Addison "Yertle" McConnell, who is the closest thing this country has to a full-on traitor, and long the most-loathed US senator, has a challenger, Amy McGrath. Help her do to Addison what Andy Beshear just did to Matt Bevin -- send his worthless ass home. It can be done, despite what the pollsters and the common taters and the useless teevee prognosticators tell you.

The link once again:

Donate to Amy McGrath

Crush 'em

Another day, another tough guy leaving a threatening voicemail for a congress-critter who has the gall to disagree with Dear Leader. These losers really are a dime a dozen.

When all is said and done, if we really want to save what's left of the republic -- and hey, maybe we don't want to save it; there's a perfectly reasonable argument to be made that it's run its course, and is now just an empty husk for the plutocrats to take turns using like a blow-up doll -- but if we do think there's still something worth preserving and restoring to goodness if not greatness, then fucking well commit to it.

Obviously that means voting, despite how futile and pointless it seems anymore. Even so, game theory teaches that however dismal the odds, they're still slightly better if everyone votes than if they don't vote. And the good thing is that the more people that show up, the better those odds will get.

Unfortunately, you only get to do that every couple years at best, not counting special elections. What do you do in the meantime? Plenty -- for starters, make sure you can vote. Double-check with your local elections office to be sure. See if you can register to vote by mail, which you can do early, and is immune from the usual election-day shenanigans you read about taking place all across the angry-cracker states. No compromised voting machines to change your vote or "lose" a power cable or any of that bullshit that people do.

THEY CHEAT BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY CAN'T WIN FAIR AND SQUARE.

Keep that in mind at all times, and use it as a weapon. Think about the thought processes involved in them not only cheating on the day of, but planning and strategizing how to cheat in advance, starting with #MoscowMitch (Putin's Bitch) preventing all election security legislation that has been drafted by the House, to come to a Senate floor vote. Many states use electronic machines whose software was created in -- wait for it -- Serbia. Yeah, no way the Russians could possibly hack our elections at all.

But simple math, and the results of the 2016 election, tell you that as awful as the cultists are (and no, it's not snark when I say repeatedly that I sincerely wish on them all the very worst things life has to offer), there are more people who see Dear Leader for what he is, and despise him for it, than there are of these simpering morons who would gladly let him fuck their wives and take a dump on their dinner tables. That's why they have to cheat -- there are more of us than there are of them, and they know it, pure and simple.

So use that day-to-day. Maybe I'll have to repeat this on a daily basis until I pull the plug on this popsicle stand in a year or so, but if enough of us boycott the companies that support the shows that put the liars and the propagandists on, they'll have to notice. Their money people will panic. The companies will pull ad space. I check into random Fox News shows every month or so, and they're running out of advertisers. It's all catheter companies who have nowhere else to go, or pharma companies that can absorb the hit.

But most of it's just in-house promo at this point, which means Fox is having to subsidize itself. That's not a sustainable business model, not even for an evil Australian bastard whose sole goal in life was to ruin the world. And you accomplished it, Rupert. Now kindly go off to your celestial reward.

As for the rest of it, the pro-wrestling spectacle that dominates the airwaves? Tune it out, turn it off, leave it. Don't listen, don't engage, don't respond. It seems like most of us have already gotten to that point, where we don't even bother to respond to that idiot relative or friend that we all have, that insists on sending whatever crap appeared on their front porch that morning. We don't even give them the satisfaction of a "bullshit" in response.

The goal at this point should be simply not to just elect any Democrat, but whichever Democrat understands the most that we can no longer return to some imaginary era of bipartisan comity. People like Joe Biden want to pretend that if we can just get rid of Trump, then we can go back to "getting things done," whatever the fuck that means. To which I would just reply, for starters:  Merrick Garland. Bokay?

Trump is not the cause of what ails us these days, but the natural culmination of thirty or forty years of Republicon propaganda and gaslighting, bankrolled by a handful of psychotic billionaires who should be rendered destitute at the earliest possible opportunity. And the party is all in on him at this point, and why shouldn't they be? He's given them everything they wanted, and told everyone to go fuck themselves in the process. He's perfect for them, and them for him. When he's gone, they'll just return to being obstructionist doorstops and discount fabulists. It's as if Diamond Joe has forgotten what Obama's entire second term was like.

So we all need to get on the same page and stay there. These people must be crushed, completely removed from power, and ended as a viable political entity. Period. You end the party, and you end the cult. Don't bother arguing with them or protesting. Explain only with your wallets and ballots, at every possible opportunity, and they will have to listen to you, I promise. It's not politics, it's math.

The Onion Timeline

Parody is deader than Generalissimo Francisco Franco. No mere bloggerses such as yours truly, we lowly scriveners who occasionally cook up short burlesques for your and our amusement, would stoop to something this cheap and obvious. And yet there it is (as always, click to embiggen).

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times -- every day with this ridiculous, jabbering moron is like watching Wile E. Coyote paint a tunnel on the side of a mountain. The added bonus of his dipshit kids (and useless dingbat Meghan McCain) lecturing everyone on nepotism is just icing on the cake.

So he green-lights ethnic cleansing on a loyal ally that helped stop ISIS. So Turkey's dictator now has fifty of our nuclear bombs. So we might be sliding toward World War 3, and/or a recession, and/or more and worse climate change issues. As long as that greasy piece of shit still sits there and people still pretend he's remotely fit to hold any office, we get exactly what we deserve.

Oh well, maybe Sean Spicer is preparing his next Dancing with the Scars skit. Probably dressed up as Maria Schneider from Last Tango in Paris this time. Bring your own butter!

The Stopped Clock

When he's right, he's right:

Romney is at least not an idiot (unlike Trump), which in this case makes it even worse. He knows he can and should do and say more, but simply refuses to. Partly this is because his character defects run nearly as deep as Trump's, it's just that Romney learned early on to mask his deficiencies with the appearance of fiduciary competence and moral rectitude, per the operational standard of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

However, if Romney somehow thinks his puling, chickenshit demurrals make him morally superior to Trump's boorish two-bit John Gotti antics, he's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, nor anywhere near as upstanding.

In other words, contrary to Dear Leader's electronic imprecations, Romney is actually the very model of a modern major Republicon. But the rest of it? Yeah, spot on. A worthless, gutless, gormless pud. The day Willard Fucking Romney ever dismounts his goddamned high horse and actually does something useful will be the first time for such an event.

Housekeeping Notes and Errata

Updating a few blog and Twitter links on the right sidebar, as I've been remiss lately. I've added three new Twitter links (Emptywheel, Lincoln's Bible, and Noel Casler) for different reasons, but essentially the same reason -- they are consistently fun and interesting reads.

On the blog front, I've updated Booman Tribune to Progress Pond (Martin Longman's new site), which I've been meaning to do for a while. I've dropped Global Guerrillas, as John Robb seems to be writing exclusively on Twitter and Patreon these days. That one may come back at some point, as there is a wealth of archived posts at that site.

And I'm dropping Dave Cohen's Decline of the Empire and Jim Kunstler, more or less for the same reason -- they've lost the thread. Cohen is a bit more lucid, but doesn't post fresh material anymore, preferring instead to repost Tim Pool or whatever confused pseudo-lib culture-con YouTube asshole is peaking at the moment.

Kunstler has essentially found a weird niche these days as Q-adjacent and putatively Trump-skeptical, yet not really, preferring to smirkingly refer to him as the "Golden Golem of Greatness" while endorsing every ridonkulous "deep state" theory swirling in the great Twitter toilet bowl of nonsense. For a while it was amusing, then it became a fine example of rank stupidity, but now it's just old and stupid, much like the aforementioned golem, and so I think it's just time to cut loose this repository of scatterbrained bullshit.

Clusterfuck Nation was one of the very first sites to be linked here, so it wasn't an easy decision. But one has to be careful in how one approaches conspiracy theories, lest they end up as a parody of themselves. No matter how sincere one may be in their unorthodox beliefs, in the case of the "deep state" theory, you have to take the following assumptions as essentially being baked into the theory:

• The entire foreign service apparatus, including the intelligence agencies and diplomatic corps, have actively decided to conspire with each other behind the scenes -- and with certain members of Congress, such as Adam Schiff -- in order to undermine Trump's presidency and "undo" the results of the 2016 election.
• Trump is completely innocent of all of the criminal charges and accusations -- collusion, conspiracy, campaign finance laundering, money laundering, influence peddling, tax evasion, bank fraud, and more -- that have been leveled at him throughout his term.

There is more, but those are the broader strokes. Now, in order to believe those things so that you can construct this incredibly baroque theory around them, you have to completely disregard these factors:

• We're almost to the 2020 election already, so removing Trump from office would result in Mike Pence (unless he can be implicated as well) becoming a president with an asterisk.
• The FSOs and intel officers that supposedly comprise this nefarious cabal are career service professionals, many of them conservative Republicans, who have served under administrations of both parties with nary a peep.
• The House Democratic leadership has been notoriously slow and reluctant to even initiate an impeachment inquiry, which is where we are at now. They clearly would have preferred not to do it at all, and let the voters sort it out next year. Trump's own words and actions made that increasingly untenable. The record is there for all to see.
• Trump's corruption and lying has mostly been in plain sight -- the mass no-show bookings at his hotels, the multiple lies per day about every possible issue. He doesn't even try to hide it. He admitted multiple times last week that he pushed Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, and then openly doubled down and asked China's leadership to do the same.

Kunstler and the rest of the "defenders" of this monstrous halfwit would like you to believe something along the lines of "his words are being misconstrued" or that his boorish behavior and utter lack of style, tact, or even basic intelligence have made mountains out of mosquito bites. That is the most pernicious lie of all, but it is crucial to their thesis.

WHAT TRUMP HAS BEEN DOING IS ILLEGAL. Not merely "bad" or "wrong" according to some imaginary set of elitist points of political correctness, not "hurtful" according to some overly sensitive SJW type. It is against the fucking law to do many of the things we know he has done, not just his attempts to conspire with the Russians or shake down the Ukrainians, but the open influence-peddling with the Saudis as well.

He has been doing this sort of thing his entire adult life. If anything, it is a more ludicrous conspiracy to concoct that absolves him of continuing that conduct -- for which he has never been held accountable, and therefore has been given no incentive not to continue -- than simply applying Ockham's trusty razor and observing that it is far more likely that he would simply continue doing the things he has always done, and purge anyone who points out the inconvenient laws.

I am always up for interesting, thoughtful opinions that differ from my own, but are at least based in empirical reality. Kunstler is just rolling around in his parboiled nonsense, ignoring the myriad obvious factors that would undermine such fevered declarations. And his commenters are just an addled swamp of Q-tards peddling the same or worse. Again, it's not that your government hasn't been up to some nefarious shit, whether the imperial custodian of the moment happens to be Saint Barry or Fat Donnie or whoever. But again, Trump has never met a camera he didn't want to hump endlessly, has exhibited this behavior and temperament his entire life, and never made any bones about it. So you literally have to believe that he (for some unknowable reason) did a one-eighty on those lifelong tendencies, but was still the victim of this impossibly coordinated and drawn-out conspiracy, initiated by disgruntled foreign policy weasels. It makes 9-11 trutherism sound utterly rational and reasonable.

And I think at this stage, where you have Trump blithely talking about executing whistleblowers and imprisoning Congressional representatives and journalists who dare to pursue an investigation of this entirely plausible narrative, the endorsement of people like Kunstler for the baroque, unworkable conspiracy theory becomes downright irresponsible. Trump is openly betraying and undermining the USA's foreign policy interests, as well as subverting the Constitution, and Kunstler and his commenters think it's all a lark.

Maybe if we all did this to the mainstream media outlets that, for example, continue to have chronic liars on to poison the narrative and pollute the waters of discourse, for nothing more than a few bucks on the back end as recompense for selling their country down the river, we might get somewhere on this.

The Power of Doing Nothing

The 1980s were an interesting time to be learning to play rock guitar, specifically in the hard rock (or "hair metal") sub-genre. As the music itself began shedding the more jam-based cliches of the '70s bands, two budding superstars began coming to prominence:  Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen. When Rhoads was killed in a plane crash in 1982, with only two albums under his belt that featured exceptional, innovative playing, that cemented his status alongside Hendrix, a "what else might he have done" type of thing. Van Halen, of course, kept plugging away, and by 1985 was easily the most heralded player of his generation.

At the same time, the pedagogy changed dramatically, as tabulature became more standardized, and instructional magazines and books were everywhere. No longer did you have to sit around while your stoner cousin showed you the wrong chords to Stairway to Heaven, and tried to dope his way through a poor approximation of the solo. You could just read along and figure it out -- and after learning a couple dozen songs that way, would have enough ear training to do tabs on your own.

This quickly turned into some of the more adept students taking standard scales (major and harmonic minor, and their respective modes), graphing them in patterns across the fretboard and up and down the neck, and then "sequencing" them, much like you would find in the J.S. Bach violin partitas and sonatas, which he composed primarily as learning tools for his children.

I switched from bass to six-string in 1984, and by 1987 was neck-deep (pardon the bad pun) in these magazines and scale manuals. It was not unusual for me to call in sick to work, and spend the entire day with a stack of material, drilling and practicing relentlessly. The results paid off, and I was playing some pretty top-drawer stuff for the time. But more and more, it started to feel somewhat like a fourth-grader drilling on multiplication tables. You definitely learn the process and the theory, and can become wonderfully quick at it, but it doesn't take you very far in applying it.

So in 1989, King Crimson guitar wizard Robert Fripp comes along with a column in Guitar Player magazine, and it was notably without the requisite "here's how you play three-note-per-string Locrian mode patterns all the way up the neck" tabs. In fact, Fripp's first column culminated in the wonderfully gnomic advice to just sit there in a chair, without a guitar, and do nothing for thirty minutes or so, ignoring the involuntary thoughts and fidgets that will occur during that time.

Doing nothing, Fripp advised, can be very difficult. It's much harder than it seems.

Boy, was he ever right. Being a twenty-two-year-old galoot in a hick town with no concept of meditation or anything of that nature, this was beyond perplexing to me. And difficult. And it took a long time to get where I felt like I could see the benefit and the point of that advice.

But he was right.

An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. dO yOuR jOb. Do your JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB.

Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, I am sick of listening to these people whine and pule their way through this, over and over and over again. It has been established that this administration has done countless "unacceptable" things already. If only the American gubmint contained an entity that was constitutionally empowered and mandated to deal with such situations, rather than just bleating and complaining every day about it. Schumer's even worse. If this is the best the Democratic party can do, it's no wonder people say fuck it and vote Republican. At least they get shit done.

Do your job already, lady. You're the majority leader, so lead your majority. Herd your cats, twist the necessary arms, get them singing the song, start the investigations, flood the zone. Get off Twitter and away from the cameras, and punch some backroom kidneys and exercise some goddamned party discipline. We're tired of the excuses. Either do something, or step off and we'll vote someone in who will. Or we'll stay home, since there's no point.

The sentiment of the midterm election could not have been clearer. At some point, ineptitude becomes complicity. It seems that we have reached that point. You keep that in mind as we approach 2020, bokay? There are no good options anymore. There is only dying on your feet, or living on your knees.

This is not a purity-pony "not pergressive or woke enuff" litmus test here, this is just a basic "these people are breaking the law, and you are doing nothing about it" situation. Quit waiting for Mueller to hold your hands yet again, and take a look at your job descriptions.

Punching Back

It seems that many progressives and liberals and such are uncomfortable with the prospect of Joe Biden's candidacy, and with good reason. The main problem is he's way too old; I persist in my delusion that people, no matter their profession, need to retire by seventy or so, certainly by seventy-five. This goes for SCOTUS justices as well. The idea that the well-being of the republic may well literally hang on the health of a frail octogenarian cancer patient should be completely unacceptable. This is no way to run a railroad, folks.

But for many, the problem is more in how Creepy Uncle Joe relates to wimmins:  the grabbing, the rubbing, the hair-sniffing, the tone-deaf remarks. Fair enough. I would ask each and every one of them if they would vote for 1992 Bill Clinton now, a quarter-century later, if he were just now emerging on the scene with the baggage he had back then, but knowing that he would accomplish the things he did while he was in office. Clinton's baggage with women, back in 1992, was at least as bad as Biden's is now, but he did manage to get a few things done, right?

So, in all seriousness, you might want to use ol' Slick Willie as an example and ask yourself if it's all worth it. Not that it matters, since even if the Dems do manage to unseat Trump next year, it will mean nothing if they can't dump McConnell and Graham as well. They will make the Mueller investigation look like a walk in the park for the next Democratic president.

One thing Biden has that few of the others have -- but they're learning! -- is that he doesn't take any shit from Agent Orange. He can talk some trash. For the record:  any candidate that pre-emptively starts in with that "high road" shit has lost my vote already. Bokay? Not having it anymore. I'm tired of listening to this bloated wad of spray-tanned lunchmeat shit all over everything I believe in. I want someone who's going to call a lie a lie, and who isn't going to take shit from that unqualified moron. If that's too much to ask, then go run for Lions Club chapter president or something, and save us all the trouble. I want someone who's going to bounce this motherless fuck all over the ring.

So while I don't want Biden to win the nom, I definitely hope he stays in until the end of 2019 at least. He can draw some blood on Trump, he's not going to just meekly take shit from that asshole and murmur some dopey nonsense about not stooping to his level or whatever. Fuck that noise. Get in and fight. If the situation is as urgent as you keep saying it is, then act with a real sense of urgency.

Pete Buttigieg has shown the truth of this over the last week, taking advantage of the Memorial Day weekend to jab at the fat, cowardly draft dodger. and you know what? Trump didn't respond at all. When was the last time you saw that happen? The fucking guy gets bent over everything. Trump hasn't said shit about Mayor Pete since his initial "Alfred E. Neuman" insult, to which Buttigieg promptly responded, I don't know who that is, old man, because I was born after the fucking Civil War. Boom!

The clichés about bullies are generally true -- their behavior is a manifestation of their deep-rooted insecurities, mostly daddy-didn't-love-me-boo-fucking-hoo issues, and instead of doing the right thing and jumping off the nearest bridge or eating a Sig Sauer, they find smaller, weaker individuals and terrorize them with their projected insecurities.

It's been a repeated standby that everything Trump accuses his opponents of, all the stupid nicknames, are projections of his own behavior, his own insecurities. So hit him on those things, work those kidneys mercilessly. He can dish it out, but can't take it, so give it back to him in double doses. It's not like he doesn't give you material every day to work with. Why is this so hard to understand?

The only reason Trump ever got as far as he did, both before and after he entered the political arena, is because no one stood up to him. Think about it. For example, everyone rightly complains about how he ripped off contractors and small businesses. And yet, for some reason, he kept being able to find more contractors and small businesses to work on his roach-infested fleabag properties. He has teams of lawyers who kept him from having to pay those businesses what he owed them. Fine. Who are those lawyers, what are the names of the firms, so that they can be properly shamed in public and boycotted for their complicity.

Trump's real Achilles heel is his record as a "businessman," and he cannot stand to be mocked and ridiculed. He can't stand being laughed at. Beat on him for his catastrophic, shitty record. Make jokes about lousy steaks and failed casinos and horse-piss vodka and the football league he ruined single-(and small-) handedly. He will crack. He can't help himself. All of his self-esteem is wrapped up in the lies he tells himself daily. Strip him of it, and he will unravel.

Trump keeps hammering on the evils of illegal immigration. Great. Maybe one of these interchangeable dumbasses who think they have a shot at the Democratic nomination should step up and take one for the team thusly:

Trump talks a good game about how dangerous and terrible illegal immigration is for America. When he sends ICE to one of his golf courses, I'll believe him. Who does he think is changing the sheets, washing the dishes, vacuuming the floors, mowing the lawns? When he sends ICE to the meat processing plants, the dairy farms, the hotels and restaurants and orchards and construction sites across the country, then we can take him seriously. Until then, it's just more hot air and empty talk, which is all you ever get out of him.

No one has the balls to just step up and say what needs to be said about Trump and his lies, and the weirdest thing about it is that the first person to do it in such stark, uncivil terms would be an instant rock star. One ignored facet of the media coverage of the electorate is the assumption that because Trump was the quintessential anger-bang vote, that all the anger must be on that side.

I can assure them that this is not the case. My fondest wish is that if we are able to consign Trump and the Republicon Partei to the dustbin of history, that we can send the corporate media in right after them. Because they did this as well.

Strategery

I know it's good sport among the smart-set types to have a laugh at the idea that a seasoned, savvy politician like Nancy Pelosi needn't jump at the beck and call of internet scriveners and opinion weasels, but here's the deal:  impeachment is a necessity now, period. She can figure out the timetable and the rollout and all, but it needs to be done.

After Mueller's public statement yesterday, failure to impeach would be more catastrophic for the Democrats than impeachment, trial, and failure to convict. They were voted back into the House to rein in Grampa Walnuts and his arrogant criminality, not to tsk-tsk and send letters. Any random fool on the street can do that shit. Backing down now would just be a show of total weakness, a clear signal that they can do whatever they please without repercussions. And why not? So far, they can.

It's hard to be patient, but I do believe that Pelosi is slowly working her way toward getting the process in motion. They will impeach, hopefully soon. But there are three things they can do to make this process much more effective:

1. Approach it as a marketing campaign. Seriously. Say what you want about Trump's nonsensical chants of "no collusion," but it's effective on his base. Simple, clear, consistent messaging. Quit stumbling from info tidbit to hastily gathered photo op. This is the product, this is the value proposition, here is the launch and the rollout. Identify your point people (four to six maximum) and flood the fucking zone with them. Have them say the same few catch-phrases over and over and fucking over again as the investigation progresses and more shit comes out, until the rube on the corner knows the tunes by heart. Stop praising your "diversity" and "tolerance," which just boils down to piss-poor attempts to herd cats, and get your shit together. Build your own cult, for fuck's sake.
2. Tell the political consultants to go fuck themselves. It's those rented weasel-faced "centrist" dirtbags that got you in this mess in the first place. Listen to your voters for once, the sentiment is clear. Trump's voters are already "energized." They're all in regardless. You need to start worrying about not demoralizing your own base. We all know this motherfucker's crooked like a three-dollar bill, and if the Democrats are not going to vigorously pursue these matters, per their constitutional and moral obligation, then people will not bother to show up next year. What would be the point? Quit trying to poach these imaginary slivers of assholes who despise you, and start giving the people who want to vote for you a reason to do so.
3. Start identifying vulnerable Republicans in the House and Senate, and work them over. Approach them as colleagues and make one last good-faith effort to (lulz) appeal to what's left of their better angels, and when that inevitably fails, be ready to do town halls in their districts, using that message discipline, and get it all up on YouTube and social media. Fuck the corporate media. They're only talking to each other. Get some polls together that start showing some effect on the incumbent's rating, and then go back to those traitors and give them one last chance to do the right thing before you go scorched-earth on their worthless asses. Justin Amash is an outlier, but you get just a couple more to budge, and you get momentum. The next one of these gutless turds to "express private misgivings," ask them straight-up what it's going to take to get them to grow a conscience. Once they name a price, now you have a negotiation point.

The challenge with Mueller's investigation is that the deeper he dug, the broader the vein of corruption gold became. It's clear that we still probably don't know half of what went on -- hell, Mueller himself probably still doesn't know the half of it. That corrupt piece of shit Barr shut him down, pure and simple. There's a reason for that. The impeachment investigative process will bring more of that corruption to light, and consistent marketing of that steady drip-drip-drip will make a huge dent, and will bring a few remaining "centrist" Republicons around.

Bill Clinton once famously said that people would rather be strong and wrong than weak and right. I think the truth is even simpler and more fundamental:  People want politicians who will fight, even when they're wrong, even when their cause appears lost. And in this case, the cause is clear and right and vital, and if the Democrats can't get it up for this, then again, there is no point in continuing to vote for them. Yes, there is a chance that it will backfire, but refusal to even try will most definitely lead to failure.